The Potions Master: a Short Story
by mamagrannycrafts
Summary: Severus has a new group of students at Hogwarts and one of them changes him just a little. (:


_I don't own any of the characters created by J.K. Rowling. They are her intellectual property._

_This fanfiction is for my best friend. (:_

The soft light of the candle that sat on a desk crowded with neat stacks of papers waved back and forth in the small breeze that came through the wide door that stood open leading into the side office of the quiet damp dungeon that was littered with dirty cauldrons and measuring utensils haphazardly left on table tops by students from the Gryffindor house hours earlier in their haste to leave the classroom of their least favorite teacher.

Severus Snape sat in the candlelight and sighed as he looked a yet another erroneous paper handed in by a first year. The handwriting was rushed and wobbly and there were multiple erasure marks and things crossed out.

Severus sighed and leaned back into his chair, rubbing his eyes with his fingertips, "Would it be too much to ask the students to crack open a book?"

He stared at the ceiling and grabbed his wand, walking out of his office to face the room it would only take a matter of seconds to clean with a wave of his wand. He pointed his wand at the room as he entered, but startled when he heard a soft, "Oh my!"

He looked into the room and saw a very frightened Hermione Granger standing behind a desk. Her mouth was in a tight "o" shape. Her hand that was reaching for a set of vials was shaking, "I'm so sorry, I finished dinner early and realized I'd forgotten my vials earlier today!"

Severus lowered his wand and gave her what he hoped looked like very serious stare as he tried to hold his amusement in check. Quite normally he reveled in the fact that the students of Hogwarts feared him, but as he looked at Miss Granger it almost seemed that her fuzzy hair was shivering and it made him frown.

"I'm not going to hex you Granger," he said stiffly, putting his wand in his robe pocket. "Get your things and go."

She closed her mouth and swallowed, "Yes sir."

She put her vials in a small protective case and put them under her arm. She took her wand out of her pocket and made a lovely wand movement that cleaned the entire desk.

"You don't have to clean that," Severus said, giving her an obligatory eye roll at her actions that he actually rather appreciated. "Your class wasn't the last here."

"I don't know if part of the mess was my fault. I was late for me next lesson and left in a hurry," she said matter-of-factly as she always stated things. It was irritating to her classmates, but he found it endearing although he couldn't bother showing favoritism towards a student who wasn't in his house. He had a reputation to uphold after all.

"Well, get on your way then, Granger!" He snapped.

"Yes, sir," Hermione said as she rushed to the door. She stopped short and turned to face him again. "I don't understand why you're so mean to Harry!"

"Excuse me?" he said, astounded at her audacity. "That is none of your matter, Granger."

She lifted her chin up a bit and cleared her throat, "You've been terrible to him since our first day here and it isn't very productive. He would do better if you tried to encourage him in the slightest."

"Leave. Now," Severus said between clenched teeth.

The young girl made a frightened squeak and left quickly. Severus flicked his wand at the room and the cauldrons students left in his classroom for their lessons, along with vials and loose papers straightened themselves and became instantly clean.

Severus grumbled to himself over Hermione Granger's opinion of him. She found him mean. She thought he was unfair. Yes, it was true that most students thought the same thing of him, but as he fell asleep that night all he could hear was the girl's words resounding in his head: _"I don't understand why you're so mean..!"_

The next day when Severus returned to his classroom full of Slytherin and Gryffindor students he was still in a bad mood. Hermione was talking to the Weasley boy and Harry. He stared at them angrily as he started the lesson.

"Your work yesterday was utterly abysmal," he said. "I expect better today, I'd like you to turn to page ninety-seven and we will work on the simple draught on that page."

The students all turned to the page—except for Longbottom who, as usual, was reading in an entirely different section of the book. Severus walked around the room and inspected the students' work, making cutting remarks at the Gryffindor students while praising whatever he could in the Slytherin student's work—which he had to admit had to be searched for.

He reached the back of the room and looked at the cauldron Granger, Weasley, and Potter were working in.

"At least the color is close to right," he said, with a small pained looking half-smile. "Not terrible, Potter."

Harry's eyes widened in surprise. Snape felt a pang of sadness as he stared into the same eyes of his unrequited love. He shook it off with an icy glare thrown at the boy before he turned to see how Granger had reacted. His heart seemed to beat a little faster when he saw the small smile on her lips.

END.

_Author's Note: This is for my friend who ships Snape and Hermione something fierce, haha. It's not my favorite pairing, but I thought I'd give a little bit of a fluffy awh to her from Hermione's early days at Hogwarts. (:_


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